Huge discrepancy in Windows 11 (22504) folder size.

I'm not bothered by it at all. It's just something I never noticed before.
I know there are a lot of hidden files, shadow copies etc., but that much?

Is your drive compressed?

No, it's not. Standard fresh install from MS ISO (22483), then it updated to current.

Really strange, run Chkdsk on the drive, reboot and let it check the drive.

I wonder if you have any sparse files. That could account for the discrepancy.

As an example, when you create a VM, you can create the file in such a manner that it starts small and can grow as needed.

Chkdsk reports no errors.

hsehestedt said:

I wonder if you have any sparse files. That could account for the discrepancy.

As an example, when you create a VM, you can create the file in such a manner that it starts small and can grow as needed.

Click to expand...

My VMs are on a separate drive. I always allocat the full disk size (for performance reasons).

XYPlorer File Manager reports the same sizes as Windows File Explorer.

Found a good example. Try this:

Open a command prompt and change directories to some location where you can create a temporary file.

Run these commands:

FSUtil File CreateNew temp 0x100000
FSUtil Sparse SetFlag temp
FSUtil Sparse SetRange temp 0 0x100000

This will create a 1 MB file as a sparse file. Right-click the file (temp) and choose properties. Notice that the size is 1 MB but size on disk is zero.

When done, delete the file.

Subscriber43 said:

My VMs are on a separate drive. I always allocat the full disk size (for performance reasons).

Click to expand...

A VM was simply an example. There are other things that create sparse files. You can use FSUTIL in a simple batch file to recurse all files on your drive to find any sparse files.

Well, fsutil experiment turned out like you said. So, I probably have a huge amount of "sparse" files in my Windows folder.

hsehestedt said:

A VM was simply an example. There are other things that create sparse files. You can use FSUTIL in a simple batch file to recurse all files on your drive to find any sparse files.

Click to expand...

I wonder if something like WizTree or Sequoia will shed some light on this, or if its worth the trouble. Like I said, It doesn't bother me that much since there is still a huge amount of free space on the Windows partition, and Windows itself works like a charm. Although, now I'm starting to be a little intrigued by this.

I upgraded from win 10 to win 11 yesterday and did a DiskClean

Windows folder 17GB

I have run disk cleanup a couple of times. Same result.

It is because of the use of hard links in Windows. Properties counts the size of each hardlink reference so can count the real space to a linked file or folder multiple times.
This is particularly evident in the WinSxS folder in Windows. Same in Windows 10:

This is what my Win 10 VM shows:



Here, you would think the "Size on disk" figure would be larger than the "Size" figure, no?
But at least the figures seem to be on the normal side.